Video Friday: Crossing the Alps, DRC Robots, and Kirobo Goes to Space

It's barely September, but here at Automaton, we're already looking ahead to November. We've just booked our tickets to IROS (the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) along with IREX (the International Robot Exhibition), both held in Tokyo from November 3 to November 10. How are we going to contain our excitement for the next two months? Videos. Lots of videos.

In June, Microdrones GmbH sent one of their md4-1000 autonomous drones all the way across the Alps, from Switzerland to Italy. The flight covered over 12 kilometers with a 0.7 kilometer elevation change, and took 22 minutes. For a relatively small drone, it's an impressive feat:

The raw footage from the on-board camera runs long, but it's worth watching, both for the lovely alpine scenery and to see the drone desperately fighting against high, gusting winds:

Team DRC-Hubo isn't getting an Atlas, because they (of course) have a Hubo. Here's a pile of b-roll showing what the Hubo can do. There have been a bunch of hardware modifications, and I'm pretty sure that a stock Hubo is not designed for quadrupedal locomotion.

Here's what happens when a Motley Fool analyst tackles the robotics industry:

Personally, I think the processing power and software are both mostly there, but artificial intelligence is entirely separate. Also, I'm honestly not sure how much of an impact the DRC is going to have on commercial and industrial robotics, at least in the short term, because that's not how DARPA challenges seem to work. These certainly are all things to watch, though, if you're looking for a general trend of how "robotics" is going, but WE are a MUCH better source of robotics news on that front. I promise!

And we'll wrap with this documentary called "Robots in Flight" that you can easily sink 43 minutes into.

"Robots take to the sky! Follow the journey of five teams, as they battle it out to be the first ever team to fly a UAV in to a search area, locate a lost bushwalker, drop a bottle of life saving water and return safely to the aerodrome."